


Not Quite Solid Ground

by LovelyPoet



Category: Check Please! (Webcomic)
Genre: Anxiety, College Hockey, Developing Friendships, Gen, Past Drug Addiction
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-19
Updated: 2014-12-19
Packaged: 2018-03-02 05:00:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,639
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2800472
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LovelyPoet/pseuds/LovelyPoet
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Jack is a work in progress.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Not Quite Solid Ground

**Author's Note:**

  * For [kingdoms](https://archiveofourown.org/users/kingdoms/gifts).



> A gift for Lleu.

It's past midnight, and the bus has fallen quiet in the last half hour. The buzz of their win against RPI is fading already. Even the frogs have settled down, not so excitable as they were the first few road trips of the year. Jack can hear Ransom and Holster's mirror snores from the back row, and there's a dim glow of a phone screen a few seats ahead of him. For a while he thought it was Bitty, but he hasn't heard the laugh that usually gives away Bitty's twitter scrolling for at least an hour. At this point, he's pretty sure somebody fell asleep in the middle of a game of Candy Crush and is going to be pissed when they wake up to a dead battery.

There's barely anyone else out on the two-lane road, minutes at a time passing between sets of oncoming headlights. The snow that had them down to a crawl just outside of Albany has stopped and it's clear roads and clearer skies the closer they get to Ithaca. Jack shifts in his seat, careful not to wake Shitty, who has fallen asleep with his head dropped onto Jack's shoulder. He sighs and presses his forehead against the window, watching the mile-markers tick by against the backdrop of farms and fields and vaguely familiar town names as he runs through everything he knows about this year's Cornell team.

*****************

"Jack, hey, Jack. Don't fuckin' making me wet-willie you," It's Shitty's voice, and Jack jolts, flinching against the overhead lights on the bus, the disconcerting lack of motion and the clamoring of noise as everybody starts loading off the bus.

"Wuh?" He says, rubbing at his eyes with the heel of his hands. His mouth is dry, and his brain feels fuzzy.

"Hotel, man. Game winner or not, I'm not carrying your shit." Shitty says, tossing Jack's backpack from the overhead rack at him. "You coming?"

"Yeah. Yeah, just. Gimme a minute." Jack says. He grabs the half empty water bottle from his bag and takes a few swigs.

He's the last one off the bus, and the wind is sharp and cold enough to knock away the last bit of drowsiness before he's even on the pavement. As soon as his feet hit the ground, Coach Hall taps him on the shoulder, makes a check on his clipboard, and gives the all-clear to the driver. Lardo's watching like a hawk as the guys pull their duffels out from under the bus, making sure all the equipment bags stay right where they're supposed to. Jack nods at her as he passes, stumbling toward the door of the hotel where Coach Murray's handing out room keys.

"Breakfast at ten. Practice at one," Coach Murray says, and Jack nods.

Shitty's already naked by the time Jack gets to their room, stretched out across the bed closest to the window with his feet resting against the heater.

"If you're cold, clothes work too," Jack says, tossing his bag into the space between his bed and the wall and slipping his key card back into his jacket pocket. "I'm going for a walk."

"Come on, man. How about some sleep, Jack?" Shitty says. "For tomorrow we kick ass."

"Nah, I'm too wired." Jack says.

"You want some company?" Shitty asks, rolling over onto his stomach and propping his chin on his hand.

"You're really not dressed for it, Shits," Jack says.

"For you, I'd put on pants," Shitty says.

"All existing evidence to the contrary." Jack says. "Anyway, thanks, but not tonight."

"Stay close, man. No trouble, right?" Shitty says, mouth going serious and tight.

"No trouble. And put on some pants, Shitty. What if Coach sends Lardo to do bed check?" Jack says, turning for the door. "I'll be back soon."

He nods to Dex as he passes him by the vending machine, fighting to get it to take a wrinkled dollar bill. Jack's got quarters in his pocket, but he needs to get out.

Their hotel is just on the edge of campus. Jack turns the opposite way and it's not long before he's making his way down the slippery steps down to the Cascadilla Creek, using his phone to light the way and holding tight to the railing. The falls are still spilling over a few yards behind him. But up ahead, where the creek flattens out and is wider, shallower, there are shelves of ice spreading out from the shore. They're thin, almost transparent in places. Jack sits down on the last step and watches the water, the sway and scrape of bare branches, the fog of his own breath.

Soon enough his ass is going numb and his face burns with cold. He stands and heads back to the hotel. Coach Hall is waiting for him in the lobby, arms crossed and face set in an impassive mask.

"Good walk, Jack?" He asks.

"Had some energy to burn off," Jack says. "You know?"

"Yeah, Jack. I know. How about you try to get some sleep now, though." Coach Hall uncrosses his arms and heads for the elevator. Jack follows him, unzipping his jacket. "If you ever need to talk…"

"I'm good, Coach," Jack says, maybe half true.

"Ok. But if you ever do need to, you know where to find Murray," He says.

Jack feels the smile sneak up on him. "Got it, Coach."

The room is dark and just on the edge of uncomfortably warm when Jack opens the door. He feels his way for the lightswitch in the bathroom. He strips down to his boxers under the faint hum of the fluorescent light, pisses, and brushes his teeth. For a second, his hands twitch for a pill bottle to pop open, but the urge passes (and even if it didn't, he doesn't have anything but over-the-counter pain relievers in his bag).

Catnaps on buses notwithstanding, Jack's never been great at sleeping or anything else that requires getting out of his own head, other than hockey. It's not the only thing he misses about the pills, but it's right near the top of the list: the way he could just let them dissolve against his tongue and, almost before he even tasted the bitterness, feel everything slow down. How the world would get lighter and heavier at the same time, until there was nothing weighing him down except his own body. It made it so easy to just close his eyes and think about nothing.

He's gotten used to struggling with it again almost every night, closing his eyes and trying to focus on relaxing, but just spinning sticky webs of _what if…_ and _worse come to worse…_.

The walking helps sometimes. It helps tonight.

*****************

Jack fucking _hates_ Cornell. Samwell's up by one with three minutes left, but Dex and Nursey both got kicked for game misconduct in the second, because apparently you can't board guys and say things against a linesman's intelligence when he calls you on it, even after he's let the guys in question run your goalie four times without a whistle. (Who knew?) And Shitty left the ice clutching his knee five minutes ago.

"And don't do anything stupid," Murray says as the clock runs down on their timeout, tossing away the scribbled play diagram he was just going over. He spares an extra direct look for Jack and adds, "Any of you."

"You okay?" Jack says to Bitty as they skate toward the circle.

"I really don't like these guys," Bitty says.

"Join the club. Fucking gorge jumpers. You're doing good, though" Jack says. "Took that last hit like a pro, Bitty. Not letting them get to you. Good job."

"Me?" Bitty says, shrugging, like it's not a big deal, like he didn't somehow bootstrap himself into being able to take a hit (and even throw one) over semester break. "I'm not the one they've been gunning for all night. You and Holster are gonna be more bruise than not tomorrow. And Shitty… do you think he's hurt bad?"

"He'll be fine. And I'm good. I can handle it." Jack says, which doesn't mean that he hasn't been holding back the urge to drop gloves all night, damn the rules. "Come on, let's win this thing. I don't want to listen to Rans whining about only getting a single batch of victory cookies out of this trip"

Bitty's smile is bright, and Jack has to shake himself out of staring, as he takes up position for the faceoff.

It's two minutes of ugly, edge-of-dirty play before Cornell pulls their goalie and Jack's in the right place to get the puck that Chowder manages to clear into the neutral zone, the right place to put it into the empty net and put them two-up.

When the buzzer blasts, he lines up to congratulate Chowder on the win, gives him an extra headpat and, "Nice assist, kid." Under his mask, Chowder's eyes go saucer big, like he hadn't heard the PA announce his point.

*

"You're so beautiful to me right now," Shitty says, sitting down and flinging his arm over Jack's shoulder, There's the outline of a knee brace under his sweats, but he's already sworn up and down that it's barely a tweak and not even close to a sprain. ("I'll be fiiiine, Jack. Just fine. Won't even miss a game. And that's not just the painkillers talking, dude.") Then louder for the whole bus, "You're all so beautiful to me right now! Victory and vengeance over those who would do me injury."

"We're always beautiful," Ransom calls out, and Holster pipes up with his quick agreement. Jack rolls his eyes but he's not gonna disagree, not when he's riding the high of a three point game and a roadtrip sweep.

*****************

A week and a half later, after a split series at home, a haus party that was loud and long enough to actually drive him to sleeping in the 24-hour study room at Founder's, and another idiot talking-head on Hockey Central ranting about Jack "wasting his prime years" in college and guaranteeing he'll never escape his father's shadow, the high has definitely worn off.

He wakes up after a fitful night of disappointing his father on and off the ice to the sound of two sophomore grinders arguing in the hall about which was better, _Billy the Exterminator_ or _Hillbilly Handfishing._ At first it's just annoying, but then it veers into mockery of southern accents, and it's suddenly enough to make Jack wonder how the hell either of them got anybody's dibs and whether there were a way to revoke them. Jack's just about to tell them to knock it the fuck off when Bitty's door slams open. Jack's can't quite make out the words, but he recognizes the tone well enough to know that Bitty doesn't need his help dealing with the situation and that he isn't leaving any room for negotiation on the issue.

That's the high point of the day.

When he leaves the haus in a hurry, he realizes it's dropped almost fifteen degrees from the already ‘gonad-shrinkingly cold' that's had Shitty fully dressed for the last three days. He's almost half and hour late for his first class, a fifteen-student Historiography of North America seminar. And, at the end of class, when he gets back the paper that he worked his ass off on there's a disappointing (potentially disastrous) C- and _"Your topic is too broad, and your primary source searches lack depth. See me to discuss possible revision for credit"_ in the professor's careful block print.

At practice, he fucks up three times in a simple passing drill he's been able to do since he was ten, and later he shouts at Bitty when he flinches back from a hit (even though it's in the middle of a non-checking exercise and Dex was definitely out of line for taking him into the boards). The look Bitty shoots him then is hurt and concerned, and just on the edge of ready to snap back at him. Jack feels a different kind of sweat break out against the back of his neck as he swears at himself under his breath for screwing it up again and slams his stick against the boards.

"Sorry, Bitty." Jack says, pushing the door open and slumping down on the bench. "I didn't mean… I'm sorry."

"Zimmermann?" Coach Hall asks

"Good, Coach. I'm good. I'm fine. Just need to catch my breath."

"Hey," Shitty says, moving to lean over the boards, his face bent close to Jacks and his hands firm but careful when he grabs him by the shoulder. "Jack. It's just a practice, man. It's cool, and hey, no harm, right Bits?"

Bitty nods, smiling carefully, like he thinks Jack's fragile.

"I said I'm good." Jack says, but when he pulls his gloves off to fix a loosening tail of tape on his stick, his hands are shaking.

"And I'm saying you're done for the day," Coach Hall says gently. "Go get dressed. Rest up. You're going to have some work to do tomorrow."

Jack knows better than to fight this, but that doesn't make him any less humiliated to be walking back to the dressing room with the whole team watching. He's captain, older, more experienced than any of them. Regardless of the rest of it, he's supposed to able to play hockey, to get through a practice without reverting to a complete fuck-up.

He showers fast, tugs his toque down over his still damp hair, and stalks out of Faber. It's tempting to just go home to the empty haus, to put headphones on and wallow in very-post-adolescent misery. Instead, he walks. He takes a long-way meander down into Lake Quad. There are more people on the paths than he wants to be around, but the temperatures have everybody moving as fast as they can to get where they're going. He's the only one out and aimless.

Except he's not really aimless. He can't help it. He walks right up to the edge of the pond… and then further. The ice is solid under his feet. 

*****************

Even with his detour, he's still home before any of the rest of the team. He makes a sandwich, careful not to disturb any of Bitty's things or leave any crumbs on the cutting board. There's somebody's notebook hanging half off the arm of the couch. Jack grabs it, tears out a piece and scrawls out a quick note. He folds it into quarters and tacks it to Bitty's door.

Then he does put his headphones on and pulls up the library catalog and starts pulling together a new source list for his re-write.

*****************

When Jack steps out of his room at five in the morning, Bitty's standing there with his skates over one shoulder. And a large thermos in his right hand

"Oh, um. Hi." Bitty says, a blush rising up on his cheeks. "I was just-- Your note said."

"I know." Jack manages a smile. "It was my note. You ready?"

"Ready for what?" Bitty asks. "Skates, cocoa, five in the morning. This is all feeling really familiar, but you said last month that we were done with the checking practices."

"It's not that. Just come on." Jack grabs his skates from by his bed. They stop at the front closet, and Bitty winds a long Samwell scarf around his face until all that's showing are his eyes. Jack pulls on a second pair of gloves and grabs two beat-up old hockey sticks that are hiding behind a stack of broken umbrellas.

"There aren't enough sticks at Faber?" Bitty asks, his voice coming out muffled through the layers of wool.

"Faith, Bitty." Jack says and pushes the door open, bracing against the cold.

Frat row is dead as they walk through it, the houses all dark and quiet under the yellowish glow of streetlights. Campus is just the same. Too late for even the hardest partiers and too early for everybody but the most dedicated gymrats. The snow crunches under their feet and Jack measures his steps to Bitty's pace, surprised by how familiar it feels to keep to his side. They don't talk at all.

"Jack?" Bitty says, finally breaking the silence. He's watching Jack sit down on the bench closest to the edge of the pond.

"Get your skates on," Jack says, following his own order, yanking his boots off and shoving his feet into his skates before he can even really register the cold air through his socks.

"Is it safe?" Bitty asks. He brushes the snow off the other half of the bench, sitting gingerly next to Jack.

"Pond's shallow, and the temperature hasn't gotten even close to above freezing for two weeks. I was out on it last night. After.." Jack trails off with a shrug, tugs his laces tight. "We'll stay close to the shore, and if it so much as creaks, we'll go home."

"Is this… is this how you learned to play?" Bitty asks, and Jack laughs, loud enough that it carries far enough to echo back in the emptiness of early morning.

"Shit, no. My dad's name is on the Cup like five times." Jack stands and hands a stick over to Bitty. "I learned to skate on NHL ice and private practice rinks in stupidly huge mansions. I've been on a pond twice in my life, and once was some 'True Canadian Dynasties' bullshit magazine spread when everybody thought I'd be going first overall. Me and Dad, a bunch of Sutters-- you know --."

"I know who the Sutters are, Jack," Bitty rolls his eyes. "And the other time?"

"Johnson had some weird thing about 'demythologizing the purest state of the game' his junior year." Jack says, stepping out onto the rough-surfaced ice of the pond. The memory is a good one, mostly, so he keeps talking. "It turned into a whole big thing. There was a lot of beer, and a dare, and Shitty got his upper lip frozen to a lamp post he was pretending was-- well, that part's not important. Then Ransom came down with bronchitis like three days later, and even with Holster telling him it was probably that girl he hooked up with who worked in student health, he still says it was playing on the pond. So just don't ever bring up the purity of the game around either of them, ok? Ransom gets all bitter about missing playoffs, and Shitty cries."

"No way," Bitty says, stepping gingerly onto the ice next to Jack, his eyes darting back and forth between Jack and the solid ground at shore.

"Shitty is an ugly crier." Jack says, serious as the grave "I'm telling you, Bitty, Face all splotchy and snot in his mustache. But how about it, are we playing?"

*****************

"I let you win," Jack says before he tips the thermos back for the last lukewarm dregs of cocoa.

"So forgetting how many goals you had and then falling flat on your ass was all part of your cunning plan to build my confidence?" Bitty says, shoving his right foot into his boot.

It's almost seven and campus is starting to wake up. Even with the small area they'd been playing in, and the fact that neither of them had meant to get competitive or fancy about it, Jack's arms and legs feel enough like rubber that he's probably going to regret it when he gets to practice in the afternoon, and he's guessing Bitty might have some second thoughts about trusting Jack's judgment too.

"Come on. Your first class isn't until ten, right?" Jack says, taking Bitty by the arm and pulling him up from the bench. "There's time for breakfast before we go back to the haus. I'm buying. I owe you. You know, with all the cooking you do."

"Yeah, sure, but," Bitty pauses, bites at lips that are flushed and chapped with cold and wind. "Jack, are you ok? Yesterday… I mean, you don't have to tell me anything obviously. But sometimes you just seem like maybe you're not."

Jack takes a breath and lets it out slowly, it would be so easy to brush it off, tell a well-practiced lie.

"Bitty, you know? I mean, you do know, right? About." Jack tugs off his toque and scrubs a hand through his hair. "About me and the draft and…stuff?"

"Oh. Oh! I'm so sorry. Jack. It's none of my business," Bitty says, waving his hands. "I mean, this morning, was so nice and there I go ruining it and sticking my nose in. I didn't mean to make you uncomfortable."

"No, Bitty, hey." Jack says. "It's cool. I can talk about it. I _should_ talk about it. You're my teammate. And my friend."

Bitty makes a sound that Jack can only interpret as surprise, and if that's the case then, well, then he's fucked it up even more than he realized. He pushes on.

"And You're right. Sometimes I'm not ok. Sometimes I have spectacularly awful days. And I can't deal with it how I used to, so I'm still figuring out how to get through them. Sometimes I get it wrong. But I'm working on it, and I'm getting there. I'm going to be ok."

"Well, good," Bitty says, nodding solemnly. "And if I can ever help, you'll tell me? Or if I'm ever not helping? If I make things worse. Oh gosh, you know what I mean. Just, you'll let me help if I can?"

Jack pretends to think about it for a minute, and finally says, "On one condition."

"What?" Bitty asks.

"You let me buy you breakfast, and we'll talk about it." Jack flings an arm around his shoulder. "C'mon, Bitty. Walk with me."


End file.
